It is now thought that the future for the building is bleak, with the sports centre set to be closed by 2019 and plans for a new £36million leisure centre and water park on New Union Street well advanced.

It would appear not everybody is going to miss the building, though. Here are some other city centre buildings which divide opinion...

The Study Inn

The former AXA building, in Well Street, was converted earlier this year by Coventry-based business Study Inn to offer student accommodation.

The 307-bedroom development is part of the firm's 'student village' plan - which has also seen Burges House in Ironmonger Row transformed.

However, many have commented on the reality of the final design being some way off the anticipated look, after the firm released images of its planned vision for the building.

Paul Maddocks, the vice-chairman of the Coventry Civic Society, said: “The AXA building was one of the better looking high buildings in Coventry, a very expensive build. Spray-painting it cheapens the look of Coventry."

Coventry Market

Coventry Market

Open six days a week, the city's market has a rich history dating back to 1958.

Voted Britain's favourite Market in 2010, the architecture of the building itself has drawn criticism from many in the city.

Britannia Hotel

Britannia Hotel, Fairfax Street

One blogger, writing on TheViscount, wrote: “The remarkable bulk of the Brutalist Britannia Hotel straddles the road, with all the grace of an obese chip scoffer in stilettos, resting her arse on the (daft mock-Grecian) bus station to the right.”

And Birmingham Post arts editor Terry Grimley once said: “I would be pleased to take the first sledgehammer to the Stalinist grey hulk of the Britannia Hotel.”

But town planner and urban designer Adrian Jones, writing on Jones The Planner, was a little more ambiguous, calling it “spectacularly brutalist”.

Sainsbury's, Trinity Street

Sainsbury’s, Trinity Street

In 1999 the supermarket, worried about losing trade, refused to move to a site next to the Britannia Hotel, forcing the city council to rethink part of the Phoenix Initiative.

One online article describes the incident as a “failed attempt to lure Sainsbury’s out of its faceless concrete bunker on Trinity Street.”

And writing on Flickr, Tanj666 said: “Why aren’t they also shouting to get rid of that 1960 concrete monstrosity known as Sainsbury’s?

“If ever a building should be ground down to hardcore it has to be that eyesore."

Cathedral Lanes

Cathedral Lanes, Broadgate, Coventry

The shopping centre is often cited as the city’s most unpopular building.

The 1980s building has been hugely controversial, partly because it blocked visits to the old cathedral’s medieval spire and Sir Basil Spence’s 1960s cathedral masterpiece.

Primark

Primark, Ironmonger Row, Coventry

Writing on SkyscraperCity.com in 2009, New Troll wrote: “Primark is another example of what is wrong with Coventry.

“The building only has one front (which I quite like) but the back and the sides are monolithic, featureless walls, and one side is a squalid tunnel!

“It’s terrible. It’s so bad that when they were thinking of building a square behind it, they had to come up with some dreadful idea to use a big TV screen to hide the fact that one side of the square would be a six-storey brick wall with nothing on it. Absolute crap.”

Pool Meadow

Pool Meadow, Fairfax Street, Coventry

The bus station, with its ‘Greek portico’ facade, was built in 1994.

In a letter to the Telegraph in 2009, James Avery, of Craven Street, said: “Bus passengers have had enough of putting up with Pool Meadow, which is dingy, ugly and badly designed.

In November last year we reported how the bus station had become a magnet for criminals and trouble-makers - with police called to the area more than 400 times in the past year.

On the Knowhere website, one contributor wrote: “If ever a place was more inaptly named than ‘Pool Meadow’ I’ve yet to see it.”